Not My Thing

In the past couple of weeks, I read I Want to Show You More by Jamie Quatro and North American Lake Monsters by Nathan Ballingrud. They’re both short-story collections. They’re both exquisitely written. I mean, god damn, each story is like some perfectly crafted jewel.

Some perfectly crafted jewel that just leaves me feeling like blech. What is this thing I have just read and why did I just read it?

I want to think some more about what I didn’t like about them. Like I said, it’s got nothing to do with the quality of the writing. These are folks who have brought their A-games. Possibly not just their A-games. But there’s a kind of heaviness to their writing that I don’t like. I finished both of them and felt like “Great, now I can’t breathe.”